


Return of the Green Lion

by chipofmint



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, First Kiss, Reconciliation, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7216354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chipofmint/pseuds/chipofmint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pidge comes back to the castle and has a few choice words for Allura. Will Allura be able to explain why she hid such crucial information about Zarkon from her team? Spoilers for Episode 11: The Black Paladin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return of the Green Lion

**Author's Note:**

> Set several weeks after episode 11, when the paladins are scattered across the universe.

Pidge is the first to find the Castle, and she is not happy.

The Green Lion comes down with a screech on the landing pad. Before the mothership has time to go into proper protocols or Coran comes to greet her, Pidge has her helmet off her head and launches her small body out of the cockpit. Hair sweaty from the humid planet she had just escaped from, green eyes bright, she throws her helmet down to the hanger deck. It lands with a hard ‘klunk’ and rolls away as Pidge stalks up the platform, towards the place she knows Allura is hiding.

 

* * *

 

The empty chamber where the King’s hologram used to reside stands cold and silver around the tall princess. Coran snoozes in his bedchambers several levels above her, eyes off the monitors for once. Allura stands in her nightgown, again unable to sleep, gazing into the wall of the chamber as if she can still see the fuchsia flowers of her home planet bending under the breeze. 

“You knew! And you didn’t tell us!”

She turns at the voice, white hair ribboning around her face as she swings her head to see Pidge standing with her hand on the door switch.

The little paladin is breathing hard, eyes shining, brown hair slicked down to her forehead from sweat. Her face seems bare without her glasses.

“How could you?!” Pidge shrieks, and Allura recoils as if from a slap.

Pidge’s heavy breathing is the only sound for a few moments as Allura slowly turns her head back to her friend.

“Oh,” she says, as if nothing at all is the matter. “Pidge. I’m so glad you’ve made it back. Did you see any of the others?” 

“You’re ignoring my questions!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, exactly....”

“Bull you don’t.” Allura’s uneasy smile melts off her face.

“Zarkon. Was. A. Paladin,” Pidge spits out each word, bringing them both back to the time weeks ago when the team had been split apart by time and space. Allura’s face falls, cheeks stiff and stony, eyebrows raised in apology, mouth open as if to cry out. 

Pidge’s eyes narrow.

“Don’t act surprised! I thought about this while I was trying not to get killed on some jungle planet, and there is no way you couldn’t have known about him. The way you talked about Zarkon, how dangerous he was, and yet you told us nothing!”

“Pidge, I can explain if you will let me. I was trying...”

“Zarkon nearly killed Keith and Shiro,” Pidge doesn’t pause for more than a breath, cutting Allura off completely, “and if we had been more organized and had known what we were up against, we would have gotten out of there faster! If you hadn’t gone to that ship with Shiro like an idiot, I saw you on the monitors, this would have never happened! What kind of leader are you!?”

In the course of this montage, Pidge had been pacing forward and now stands nose-to-nose with the princess. 

Allura lowers her head.

“A bad one, apparently.”

Pidge’s eyes widen. In all her angry imaginings of this encounter, she had not anticipated Allura to admit to any guilt. Allura always seemed so… kind and yet unapproachable to Pidge. Someone who considered themselves above the rabble. She was not Pidge’s princess then. But now…

“I’ve lost my crew and apparently, have also lost their trust.” Allura takes Pidge’s smaller delicate hand between her two larger ones, her mouth widening into a small smile that struggles to stretch across her face. 

“Princess…”

“No. It is time you heard me out. You can resume being angry with me afterwards, then we can find the rest of them.”

“‘When we find the rest of them?’ Don’t you think I already tried that? I-I tried to sense them through my lion. I reversed engineered some of our tech. I tried everything, and I can’t find them. I just found a family again, and because of you, I’ve lost them!”

“Coran and I have not been able to find them either, but I can’t give up hope. Not after everything we’ve done together. Can for a moment, you have faith in me Pidge? Will you listen to me?”

Pidge’s mouth narrowed, which wasn’t a yes, but wasn’t a no either. Allura breathed in deeply.

“Alright. First, Zarkon.” She dropped Pidge’s hand from her grasp and smoothed the front of her nightdress. “I knew he was a paladin of my father’s time, before I was born. In those days, paladins consisted of many different alien races, although there was a prejudice against non-Alteans such as Zarkon. He was the most talented among them, but he became intoxicated with the lions’ power and though he connected well with his lion, he connected poorly with his teammates. Once he began to try and use his power to usurp my father, the commander behind the paladins, the other four paladins took him down and he fled, not to be seen again. Until, that is, he amassed an army and became our sworn enemy. How he has lived this long… I don’t know.

“I was frightened if I told you about this, about a paladin who became possessed by the power of the lions, that you would be fearful of your own selves getting sucked away into a vortex of greed. I was afraid your resolve would waver if you knew we were fighting a problem that, in some ways, my own people created.” In uncharacteristic hesitation, Allura stares down at her clasped hands. “At one point, Altea knows why, my father trusted every paladin, including Zarkon. I was afraid of making the same mistake and avoided confiding too much in all of you. I barely knew any of you and was not ready to trust you entirely.

“I don’t regret concealing the truth, because I still think it was the right thing to do at the time. You can be angry for me for that. I do regret that in concealing the truth, I hurt you so badly and, as you suggest, jeopardized the team.”

Allura’s eyes lift, boring into Pidge’s face, and Pidge notices for the first time how a strange pink light seems to shine from Allura’s pupils. 

“You mentioned that you found a family again and lost it as a result of my actions. Can I presume I am included in that number?”

Pidge’s eyes well with tears, and she brushes them away with her knuckles, nodding angrily behind her hand.

“I am honored.”

“I still think you're at fault though. You don’t understand; I trusted you. I thought all of the others would be there for me even if I didn’t find my father and brother, and now I have no idea where they are? I feel as if I’ve lost everything!”

Pidge realizes how wrong her words are as soon as they leave her mouth. She thinks of the hologram of a king shattering into golden light.

“I feel as if I have found and lost a family again as well,” Allura admits, putting her hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “I love Shiro…”

Pidge felt a strange twisting in her gut at that.

“…and you, and all of my Paladins.” 

The twisting subsided.

“Alone, we had less of a chance of finding them, but together? I know we will find them again.”

“We better,” Pidge mutters, eyes filling up with tears in earnest. 

Allura’s thumbs brush the damp hair from Pidge’s face. She kisses Pidge on the forehead, allowing her mouth to linger longer than necessary. The heat from her lips spread from that point through every neuron in Pidge’s brain, overheating her thoughts like a run-down supercomputer.

“I am in no place to ask,” Allura still held Pidge’s head in her hands, tears welling in her alien blue eyes, “but as my knight, will you serve your queen? I need you, Green Paladin. Now more than ever.”

Pidge’s eyes close. Lips pursed, she removes Allura’s hand from her face, rotates it, and kisses the back of it. 

“To find our family,” she promises in a whisper against Allura’s skin, a vow of compliance, for now.

“Yes.” Allura smiled. “To find our family.”


End file.
